Wrote hard and put up wet – a fiction writer from parts unknown

Publications

“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; make it hot by striking.” (WB Yeats)

PUBLISHED, in roughly chronological order, since June 2016:

CommuterLit.com has run eight of Mitchell’s short fictions. In June 2016 the e-zine published “The Red River Valley Trilogy“: “Encountered on the Shore”, “A Vile Insinuation”, and “Without Reason”. The linked stories concern, respectively: the aftermath of a violent encounter on a city street; a young American leaving the ball fields of North Dakota for the killing fields of Vietnam; and a devout Mennonite man grappling with cancer and faith.

“Gather By the River” ran the week of Dec 5. It appeared in two parts on consecutive days. “Zero to Sixty”, the lead segment, introduces the chief character and his circumstances; sparking some poignant memories of Hartplatz, his childhood home. In the second piece, “The Margin of the River”, the protagonist returns to the scene of the previous day’s incident with troubling results. On January 30, 2017“The Rothmans Job” a wintery, noir-comedy-caper story set in the seventies in downtown Winnipeg ran on CommuterLit.com.

CommuterLit will present a reprint of “South of Oromocto Depths”, one of Mitch’s most true north stories, soon after Canada’s 150th birthday celebration.

Two more of his stories appear in Fiction on the Web(UK): “Nothing to Lose”, a short, vivid story where the main character relives regrets and long-buried memories and “Heavy Artillery”, in which a local runs the count full on the summer streets of a small town.

“A Fisherman’s Story”, tells the story of sorrow as it visits a simple family on the shores of “pre-tourista” Puerta Vallarta in Rhubarb MagazineIssue 39. (Mitchell has crafted two stories – a prequel and a sequel – to the original story and they will be submitted for publication soon.)

Literally Stories (UK)published Mitch’s twisted yarn, “Breezy and the Six-Pack Sneaker”; as well as his nostalgic walk down a dangerous alley in 1932 Winnipeg, “The Fifty Dollar Sewing Machine”; the contemporary tale, “Frozen Tag”; and the story of teenage friendship, drink and folly, “South of Oromocto Depths”.

“Our German Relative,”tells a fictionalized tale of Mennonite lore from the early days of communist Russia. This story is found on Red Fez, a literary/art site online, where “our German Relative” became the Story of the Week and followed that distinction with the second Most Viewed Story of the Month (Dec) and then Most Viewed fiction in Issue 96 of Root Metz.

Mitch’s writing returned to Fiction on the Web on January 23, 2017, when “The Preacher and His Wife” was published on the site. This short fiction tells the comical tale of misinformation and gives readers an inside peek into (real) pure Mennonite life, circa 1963.

(P.S. – All the better to C you with, Fair Folk has changed their publication name to OCCULUM, effective 6.20.17)

The MOON magazine ran the short story, “The Peacemongers”on June 5, 2017. This 4,800-word fiction was in the June 2017, “Swords into plowshares: Transitioning to a world without war,” issue and the author was–and is–is pleased to be included!

UK-based language learner literary site, Alsina Publishingwill present the gritty realism flash fiction, “The Light Pool”. (July 22) It is interesting to note that the publisher and the author collaborated to edit the piece to contain simple language and short sentences — the best material for new language learners to absorb on the publishers new “LingoBites” site, where stories are presented in English & Spanish; print & audio. A new three-part serial by Mitchell, “The Old Guardsmen”, will be presented to LingoBites audiences (everyone gets to read three free stories a month) on Nov 20, 2017.

“The Light Pool” was described as; “a very genuine flash fiction piece.” This story will be one of ten included in a newly-announced secondary school unit featuring LingoBites stories.

riverbabble, one of three literary journals published by Pandemonium Press of Berkeley, CA, published “The Margin of the River”, a story of unintended violence, on June 16, 2017. (A short fiction that first appeared in CommuterLit in December 2016.)

OCCULUMpublished “Graperoo” – a whimsical perspective with some telling observations about life in the “animate sphere” August 17. Do you ken me?

Literally Stories, a UK-based literary journal dedicated to the short story, ran “So Are They All” on August 22. This story takes place in the year following the Cuban Missle Crisis of 1962 and asks questions about loyalty, mutually assured destruction (M.A.D.) and Saskatoon pie.

Fictive Dream(“…very excited about short stories in the UK & Ireland!”) published “The Seven Songs” on Nov 26. This story tracks a superficial relationship between two men who are less than honest with one another and themselves. We like to receive the whole truth – we just don’t often provide it to others.

Digging Through the Fatpublished two LINKS to prose by Toews on Fiction on the Web: “Nothing to Lose” and “Heavy Artillery”. (Aug 30)

Fiction on the Webwill publish the short story, “Fall From Grace”. It’s a tale of Hartplatz misadventure and lessons learned.

Written in a kind of ‘raconteurial high vernacular’, at least, that’s what Mitchell’s editor, James McKnight, has termed it…

the story recounts the unexpected complexity of a summer day and “sepia-toned nostalgia”. Publication is on Dec 18.

Two CANUCK acceptances came in the week of Nov 22: Pulp Literaturesaid Jo to “Away Game” while Blank Spacesfollowed a few days later with an affirmative for “Sweet Caporal at Dawn”. Both stories are set near the water, near the 50th parallel and in one case, near to heaven. Stand by for publication details.

CONTESTS, PRIZES, ANTHOLOGIES, etc.

“So Are They All” won second place in the Adult Fiction category of the 2016 “Write on the Lake” writing contest and appears in the Lake Winnipeg Writers’ Group’s semi-annual journal, Voices, Volume 16, No. 2. Mitchell presented excerpts from the story during the Voices launch at McNally Robinson Book Sellers in Winnipeg, on November 20, 2016.

#

“Fall from Grace” received an honourable mention (not published) in The Writers’ Workshop of Asheville Memoirs Contest, 2016. TWWOA has been active in the North Carolina literary scene since 1985. A young boy’s fears come to life – danger hides in plain sight on a quiet, small-town day.

#

Mitchell’s story, “The Phage Match” was one of 16 finalists in Deathmatch 2017 – a writing contest for independent creative fiction in Canada, from the special people at Broken Pencil mega-zine.

#

The story “Nothing to Lose”, which is part memoir-part imagination about Chuck Toews, as a young man in Steinbach, MB (“Hartplatz”) has been chosen for a print anthology in England. American writer Charlie Fish–an expat living in London–has published the online literary zine, Fiction on the Web, since 1996. In that time he has published more than one thousand short stories by writers from around the world. Charlie is publishing a print collection of his favourite stories from FotW‘s 21-year history. The proceeds of this literary collection’s sale will go to a London hospital charity:Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation Trust. The book will be available for purchase in the new year (2018).

NEW! Writing: A novella (or short novel) is underway. A lonely misfit embraces his square-pegged nature and seeks a different landscape. Editor McKnight is minding the compass as we follow a winding Boreal trail along the 50th parallel.

MANY more short stories& flash pieces are ready for the slush pile. I wrote over 100,000 words in 2016! I’m on pace to better that in 2017.

I also have a first-draft novella in waiting: a 17K-word speculative thriller called “Tafelberg” for which I have fondness – not a little. But it needs elbow grease – not a little.

A novel? Of course. It has a wonderful plot line, plucked from the rhubarb patch. It is on hold for the time being and foreseeable as I concentrate on other impossible fictive dreams.

Please feel free to share this post! The internet is big and I am comparatively small. Sure, I'm HARDWORKING, but I need a little help getting my stories out there. Many *SENDS* make much work little. Love-hate-meh: I welcome all comments.

Where in the world is, "the top of the water and the bottom of the sky"? It's at Jessica Lake - a (magnificent) writers' colony. Population: 1. Nearby Rennie is where we get our mail and necessities; beer, wine, Bothwell Cheese.